Conrad Black: The hounds have been set loose on Murdoch

As I have written elsewhere, the most nauseating aspect of the News Corporation telephone- and email-hacking imbroglio, until recently, has been watching the self-righteous hypocrites in the British establishment who grovelled to Rupert Murdoch for decades now piously demanding that he pull up his ethical corporate socks. It has been no secret how News Corporation was operated for decades. It is a nasty, vulgar, cynical, dirty-laundry operation that has reduced standards of public taste and decency on at least four continents for decades. The only quality product it has ever touched that did not wither in its hands was The Wall Street Journal.

But this is not illegal, and I didn’t think there was any good reason to stop News Corporation from buying the shares it did not own in the satellite telecaster BSkyB, as it already controls that television service; and the bid, if it proceeded, would have conferred billions of dollars of capital gains on minority shareholders. Before the British Prime Minister and leader of the opposition embarked on a Monty Python comedy team debate over who wishes a more profound dismemberment of News Corporation because of its evident moral turpitude, they should have contemplated the evils of political prostitution in their own political parties. In his recent memoir, Tony Blair, proudly confessed that he had prostrated himself before Murdoch to try to win his support away from the British Conservatives. Stanley Baldwin, three term inter-war prime minister, was a shilly-shallying appeaser, but at least in his day, it was famously “the harlot press” and not the harlot prime minister.

Some good may come of this. It’s too late to expect moral rearmament from News Corporation, but there is a chance that British politics will be a little less contaminated with toadying to the highest pitch sleaze merchants than it has been. The British will work this out, and its system of public inquiries and police investigation and impartial justice can be relied upon to prosecute those against whom there is a real case without destroying the interests of the News Corporation shareholders or crucifying innocent members of the Murdoch family. Rupert Murdoch wrote the playbook for uninhibited journalistic swashbuckling and must have known that some wild and woolly things happened in his service. But there is no known reason to believe that he knew specifically about compromising a police criminal investigation or bribing police officers, and I doubt if he would have approved such actions.

News Corporation outlets in the United States and Britain and elsewhere are never hesitant to recommend that people in controversies be sent to prison before any charges have been laid, much less proved. They jubilantly did so with me, screaming for my imprisonment from the first hint of a legal problem in our company; and when I was released on bail after 29 months in a federal prison — with all 17 counts abandoned, rejected by jurors, or vacated by a unanimous Supreme Court — only The Wall Street Journal, of all the News Corporation outlets, took any real notice of it. (I will re-surrender to prison in September for seven and 1/2 months because one of the judges excoriated by the Supreme Court and then ordered to assess the gravity of his own errors spuriously resurrected two of the vacated counts, something most of News Corporation apart from the Journal was still celebrating when the heavens fell on it.) This is only to say that I don’t feel an irresistible inner compulsion to ride to Murdoch’s assistance.

This controversy now threatens to boil over into America and unleash forces infinitely more sinister than anything at News Corporation. The ease and zeal with which American prosecutors keep pushing on the open door of their unaccountable prerogatives has rarely been as visible or alarming as in Eliot Spitzer’s demand for prosecution of Rupert Murdoch under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, without ascertaining the likelihood of a triable prosecution case.

He is urging an unfounded prosecution of Murdoch for acts there is no evidence he knew anything about, committed in a foreign country that needs no help from the United States in maintaining and operating the world-respected British justice system. And Spitzer is being seconded, as of July 18, by The New York Times, all but explicitly accusing News Corporation management of covering up crimes and obstructing justice, on the basis of their own (doubtless immaculately impartial) reporting, and without regard to the jurisdictional sovereignty of the United Kingdom.

For the Murdoch empire, perhaps the most genuinely shocking allegation is that News Corporation hacked into the telephones of families of 9/11 victims. If this is proven, News Corporation could shortly be facing serious and well-founded charges in both countries. But even if no such serious crimes are proven, American prosecutors can be counted upon to use a variety of catch-all statutes to ensnare whomever they choose to target. If the United States indicts everyone around Murdoch, the usual practice, many will roll over and point at him in exchange for immunities. As I can attest, this is the core of U.S. criminal justice: the plea bargain exchange of inculpatory perjury for immunities or reduced sentences.

If Spitzerism prevails in the U.S. Justice Department, it will be the epic struggle of the American prosecutors to demonstrate that they can bring down anyone, regardless of the facts, (unless seriously incriminating facts about Murdoch’s conduct are unearthed by the British), and regardless of the resources of the accused. If they can convict the greatest media owner and builder in history with suborned or extorted perjury about events in another sovereign country, no one should doubt that it is the end of the rule of law in the United States. Already the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment guaranties of due process, no seizure of property without adequate compensation, the grand jury as assurance against capricious prosecution, access to counsel, an impartial jury, prompt justice and reasonable bail, have gone over the side with the bilge.

Almost no one, no matter how strong, can go through either the foreign or domestic version of this ordeal at Murdoch’s age (80); the prosecution would be an attempt on his life. Moreover, those who dissent from the liberal biases of the mainstream national media should not doubt the consequences if Fox News and The Wall Street Journal change hands as a result of this tumult.

That objective may be assumed, especially in the absence of any evidence or jurisdiction, to be the real motive for even considering such a prosecution in the United States.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.